No two people share the same
relationship to time: your minute
does not mean the same as mine.
I measure time in images,
as one might measure light:
candela, lumen, voltages of insight.
Lying in insomnia's unloving,
prickly embrace,
by sleep disdained,
I'm tugged in unpredictable directions
by a mind that won't relent,
a wilful, canine cyber-beast
straining at the leash
towards the traces of events,
sites of every primary sense
that mark an absence, old or recent.
Night is the occasion for a ride
through disconnected scenes,
unexpected recollections
from archival lives and dreams,
the pointless, painful, fascinating,
reappearing side by side -
infrequently some precious keepsake
washed towards me on the tide
as I patrol a darkened shore,
the watchful hound of sleeplessness,
hoping that a friendly craft
will loom out of the blank horizon,
trailing light and offering escape;
or that lethe will prevail,
stealth subduing restlessness,
extinguishing the stage lights
in the theatre of the consciousness.
But is it really sleep I want,
oblivion, unconscious rest,
or images of time, not to forget?